


The Asymptote, The Tangent And The Parallel Lines

by wynniethepooh



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Hurt, M/M, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:49:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynniethepooh/pseuds/wynniethepooh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maths does not lie. Three pieces outlining the build of a relationship through mathematical functions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Parallel Lines

**Author's Note:**

> These three pieces technically stand alone, and in places contradict each other. But I was inspired to write these after seeing this particular gif: tumblr_ludkka3PnK1qajc4eo2_500.gif  
> It was something that really drew my attention, the idea of maths and how it pertains to relationships, and so this happened, after a lot of time and agonising. There is truly no happy endings.  
> These pieces also apply the theory of no New Directions, and no glee club altogether, including the Warblers.

_'Parallel lines are the two lines on a plane that never meet. They have the same degree of slope, the same angle, but they are always the same distance apart. They are too alike, and that's what keeps them separated.'_

_-_ Mr Henderson, Eight Grade Mathematics, Lima Middle School

* * *

 

When Rachel Berry was five years old, she was told she was the brightest star in her class. Her teacher gave her that slightly false smile reserved for the child with all the answers, the corners of her lips turning down only slightly, imperceptibly. Her dads reassured her, reiterating what Miss Lanes had told her, but leaving out one key element:  _"Sometimes, honey, you have to let the other kids answer some of the questions."_  

At age six, she was already undertaking more extracurricular activities than her classmates, excelling in all of them and exceeding all her instructors expectations. She was a wonder child, a dreamer, a star. She took singing lessons, ballet, drama and art. She played piano and violin, and practiced each, and her vocal training for three hours per night. 

Hiram and Leroy pushed her, wished her to succeed and be the star she so clearly was, but they couldn't teach her the things she really needed.

They couldn't teach her to put others before herself, to be empathetic and sympathetic. They couldn't teach her to be self-deprecating and to make long-lasting friends. Instead, they could only teach her how to succeed, and how to win, and how to win  _at all costs._

* * *

 

Where Rachel Berry grew up with two dads, Finn Hudson grew up with none at all. His mother, Carole, was gentle and kind, and she knew enough of the world to push him into everything she could find. She bought him a drum kit from the toy store and had a friend of his father's from before he'd died to come and teach Finn the basics. He'd gone to athletics on Friday afternoons at the local sports centre, and played football and baseball in the Little Leagues.  

He wasn't so good at school work, and he had trouble applying himself, something which Carole always fussed over, encouraging him to sit down and do his homework at the kitchen table so she could watch him and help him when he asked for it, with his large pleading eyes.

And when he came home from school in tears because the boys in his class told him he can't have a real family, because he doesn't have someone to call Dad, only Darren, the local grass painter, and his mom, she would grab him by the shoulders and press his face into her chest, rocking him lightly. "Finn Hudson," she'd whisper, "It doesn't matter that your dad's not with us. We're still the best family around, and you're still my favourite man."

It was in this way that Finn grew up. To the kids at school, he was confident, the most popular kid in school. When they tried to tear him down, he picked up the pieces and through them in their faces with a solid throw. But at home, he was a mess, self-conscious and awkward, always worrying about his hair, and the extra weight he'd put on when he became too old for the kids athletics. 

He worried that no one would be able to love him, not properly. His high school girlfriend, Quinn, with her pretty hair and place as captain of the Cheerios, claimed to love him, but her eyes lingered longer on the Prom Queen tiaras and the medals she hoped to win at cheerleading competitions. Her ambition did not extend beyond graduating high school, but they did extend beyond Finn, and when his dreams did not match to hers, she dropped him like the lint at the back of the clothes dryer onto the bleached laundromat floor.

* * *

 

Rachel graduated from high school, not as valedictorian or class president, but with the highest participation in activities and extra classes ever recorded. In the year book her senior year, she was labelled as "most likely to be a star", but she was on the yearbook council, so the name didn't count. What the graduating class knew her as was "girl most likely to be stabbed by an annoyed public transport patron", primarily for her habit of singing at the top of her lungs in the corridors.

Her dream was New York and the Broad Way, and she applied and was accepted to every college in the area, through sheer determination and charisma in her application essays. She accepted a place in the program at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, turning down a position at Juilliard in pursuit of a stage career.

She moved in with one of the boys from her year level and graduating class at McKinley, Kurt Hummel, who had similar dreams and had been accepted into the same course. But after the first year, he would transfer to NYU to study design, finding it more suitable to his tastes and a much more achievable dream. 

* * *

 

When Finn graduated high school, his dreams and ambitions were put on hold. His stepbrother Kurt - his mother had married Burt Hummel his junior year, finally giving him someone to call "dad" - was heading out to New York with Rachel Berry to pursue acting and singing, and Burt needed someone to help him run his tire and auto shop. Some of his staff had left with big ideas of their own, starting up a new franchise location on the other side of Lima and going into opposition against Burt, and he needed all the men he could get.

And Finn, trying his hardest to be the kind of son Burt wanted, declined the football scholarship offered to him by Ohio State, and instead became Burt's apprentice mechanic, and then head of the garage floor. He wasn't so good with numbers, so he stayed out of the office, but he was good with his hands, and his time in the garage during his senior year set him up well to continue with the profession. Burt's business didn't drop, with Finn's help, and Finn sometimes almost felt glad he'd stayed.

* * *

 

Sometimes, Rachel wondered what her life would have been like if she didn't have ambition. If she hadn't pushed herself to her limit every day of high school, and then college, would her life be different? Would she still be sitting in the same penthouse apartment, running over lines for her new show with her current boyfriend - Oliver, though last month it was Henry - and pretending it didn't bother her when they delivered their line too late or too early, or without the right amount of enthusiasm. Would she be glancing at her cell, wondering if Kurt would mind if she called, just to check how he was doing and whether he was getting the work his professors had promised he'd be destined for? 

Or would she be curled up on the sofa of a small two bedroom house in small-town Ohio with a cute boy who brought her flowers and carried their son on his hip with an easy grin? Would the man be like Oliver and Henry, or would he be more like Finn, the cute guy from high school who looked at her with big eyes in the corridors but never dared to speak to her, or she to him? 

Would she be happy?

* * *

 

Sometimes, Finn wondered what her life would be like if he'd had the strength to follow his dreams. Would he be still living at home with his mom and Burt, helping Carole with Friday night dinners and bringing round a new girl every few weeks, trying to ignore the disappointed looks on his mother's face as they came and went? Would he still look at Quinn when she walked past him in the supermarket as if maybe, if he stared hard enough, she'd come back to him?

Or would he be in a nice apartment, with a flat screen TV, discussing sports and his career with a girl who smiled at him like he was the only thing in the world? Would she be like Quinn, with long blonde hair and a secretive smile? Or would she be like Rachel Berry, the girl he used to eye in the corridor, because she was so different to everyone else, and who would look at him as if he wasn't popular, just a normal kid, being the best he could be? 

Would he be able to look at himself in the mirror?


	2. The Tangent

_'The tangent line is a bit more complicated, kids, so I'll draw one up for you. It sits on the curve, touching it only once, and if you extended it all the way out into infinity, it would never touch again, and it would never cross the line of the curve. Those lines, they only ever meet once. And then they'll continue on into infinity, all on their own.'_

-Mr Henderson, Eighth Grade Mathematics, Lima Middle School

* * *

 

When she was three, Santana Lopez picked her nose and wiped it on her overalls, much to the deprecation of her mother, who would grab her hand, frowning, and clean it off with a tissue. She would smile with wide eyes and fall asleep in her grandmothers kitchen, hiding in the pantry where it was warm and heady with the smell of vanilla and sugar. 

Her dreams were those of a small child, to be a vet, to run away and join the circus, to help her mama at the real estate agents, though she hardly knew what the job entailed. She was young and carefree, and refused to share her toys until her mother pushed her into daycare and made her spend extra time with her cousins, to learn how to interact with other kids.

* * *

 

Brittany S. Pearce was ten before her mom's constant insistence to stop picking her nose actually wormed its way into her brain and stopped her motions. 

Her childhood was spent carrying her fat cat around the house, dressing it up in costume and singing songs to it, and at school she failed to excel at everything other than dancing and sport. Her abilities lay in the athletic, not in the academic, no one could deny, but she was good at hiding the extent of the problem sometimes, and her poor grades were raised by teachers who felt pity for her.

* * *

 

It was easy for Santana to know she was different. When the other girls in her class whispered conspiratorially about boys and how cute they were, she responded with only half hearted enthusiasm. She didn't seem to find their snotty faces and dumb, hopefully smiles as appealing as her friends did. 

As she grew older she dated boys, a lot of them. None of them appealed to her particularly, but others girls dated a lot of boys so she did too. Being normal was important. Every other part of her was normal, why couldn't this part be? But she didn't argue, only kissed Puckerman for the tenth time and then promptly dumped him, before he got too eager.

* * *

Brittany dated a lot of guys because a lot of guys wanted to date her. It was a simple cause and effect, and she hardly realised it was happening, not even when one of the other girls on the cheer team would pass her with a sly cough and a whispered, "Slut."

She had a good figure, that helped. And she was innocent, so innocent. And all the boys liked that. A whispered, "Come back to my house," and she would be there, smiling and unaware of the fault, even after the deed had been performed. And then, when they left her, she hardly even felt the pull. 

It wasn't until she started dating people who cared that she started to understand what relationships _should_ be like.

* * *

 

Santana's relationships were poison, and she knew it. It burned in her insides, the hatred of herself and what she was doing, but she didn't know how to stop, and soon the boys started expecting things from her, that she wasn't sure she wanted to give them. But normal girls put out, and so she put out too, and she kept on breaking.

Sometimes, to make herself feel better, she'd date a guy she knew was fragile, give him hope, take his virginity, and then, to feel like she was feeling anything at all, break his heart. She'd cry for days, but not because she missed him. 

* * *

 

Being best friends with Santana Lopez was a good thing for Brittany. Santana gave her guidance, a warm hand on her elbow who led her in a direction which was sometimes right. They were young, and they made mistakes, but Santana was there to whisper in Brittany's ear and explain something to her, and help her understand what people were trying to tell her, and hide from her when people were horrible.

Brittany never knew how horrible some of the girls were to her.

* * *

 

For Santana, Brittany was a rock. Someone to bring home on the weekend and watch rom coms with, and laugh with and fall asleep against. She didn't know that this was love; she didn't even know what being in love meant. But Brittany was her best friend.

* * *

 

It was a cold night when it happened, the two of them huddled under the blankets of Brittany's bed, socked toes nudging at calves and pinkies tangling. It was as simple as breathing for Santana to bridge the gap between their lips, kissing Brittany softly at the curve of her mouth. 

Gentle kisses turned into harsher ones, rough against the skin of necks, cleavage, stomachs. Shirts were pushed aside for access and zippers undone and at the end of the night, they lay naked side by side, only their ankles and pinkies linked again as they stared at the ceiling grinning.

* * *

 

They didn't talk about it afterwards. Brittany went back to her footballer, kissing him gently before cheerleading practice and Santana went back to Puckerman for another series of one night stands that left him grinning and her wishing for something more.

It had been so easy to fall into it, just an in the moment press of lips, but it was harder to ignore, at least for Santana. She wouldn't let them slip away from each other, not if she could help it, and every lunch in the cafeteria was spent comparing guys and celebrities, just like they always had, and she closed her eyes to the pull of Brittany's lips and pretended she didn't want it to happen again.

* * *

 

By the time they graduated - Brittany with a lot of help from Santana and the answers that Puckerman stole for them in return for a locker room blow job - Brittany had all but forgotten about the encounter, swept up in her many boyfriends and long weekends wrapped up in bed without Santana.

But the other girl was still there, hanging on every word, holding out her pinky when Brittany needed someone to talk to. Santana considered going somewhere Big with a capital B. New York or LA, and make a name for herself, but Brittany wanted to go to Ohio state, and continue cheerleading, and it was as simple a decision as that.

* * *

 

Nothing seemed to change, even as they progressed into their "experimental college days". Santana felt all experimented out, and Brittany found a boyfriend, a cute guy with a wide smile who held her hand and didn't push for anything. 

Slowly Santana was lost to the wayside. This boy was someone to take her place, someone for Brittany to talk to and rely on. And she became less and less dependent on her best friend.

* * *

 

To Santana, it was losing her heart. She could feel it ripping and breaking in her chest, but she was a normal girl, that's what she'd told herself all her life, and there was nothing she could do about it now.

There was a boy, with dark hair and darker eyes who smiled at her wickedly and made her feel like she knew nothing at all. But quickly she realised he was the same as all the others, he was the same as her. He was a heartbreaker, because he had nothing better to be, and when he dumped her, thinking he had beat, she didn't cry a single tear.

* * *

 

When Brittany dropped out of college and moved in with her boyfriend a few states away, Santana cried for days. 

By the time the tears had stopped, her bag was packed and she had booked a flight to LA. She never left the city, and Brittany never went there.


	3. The Asymptote

_'And now we come to the most complicated of our lines. This one is much harder to map, but it's very important in lots of equations. We define it oddly, naming it at the point at which, in fact, it never exists. Instead, it will get closer and closer to that line, though never once will it touch it. Those lines are destined to approach each other for all of infinity, though reaching out and touching each other is still too far away.'_

-Mr Henderson, Eighth Grade Mathematics, Lima Middle School

* * *

 

Kurt Hummel was six when he realised he was different from the other boys. He wasn't interested in sports or running around the yard and covering himself in mud pies. Instead he sat by himself at lunch time, eating his cut sandwiches and wishing for his dolls and songs, which his dad forbid him from taking to school.

His mother would smile at him, tell him how wonderful his performances was, and his dad would smile too, and clap, but it was tight and drawn and Kurt would always hear them whispering afterwards.

And at school, Kurt sat by himself.

* * *

 

Blaine grew up just like all the other boys, right in the heart of the action. His hands grew calloused from handling the kickball and he would find himself covered in mud and scratches at the end of each day, laughing as his mother fussed over his cuts and bruises.

At home, he learnt piano, taught by their next door neighbour. He was good at reading the music, it seemed as simple as reading words on paper, and his fingers flowed easily over the keys. By the time he was eight, he could play Heart and Soul, as his teacher requested, and he taught himself the full arrangement of Fur Elise, without her knowledge. She loved ragtime and he loved full and complex classical pieces, but they played together until Blaine was twelve.

* * *

 

Kurt learned piano, too, from his mother. She was skilled with the keys, and played from memory, never reading a note in her life. She sang as she played, and her voice was like angels. When she taught Kurt to play, they sat side by side, Kurt on the high notes, and they would mimic each others melodies, laughing and collapsing over each other. 

When she died, he didn't play for years.

* * *

 

Blaine realised he was gay his final year of Middle School. It had presented itself before then, of course. His lack of interest in girls, and his affinity for mens fashion stood him apart from a lot of his friends, but he was good at leaving those parts of himself his friends didn't like for when he was at home. 

When he first realised it was boys he was interested in, it was his then-best friend Aaron who was the point of his affections. He never realised what was happening until it was too late, and his hands were wandering down shoulders and towards fingers and curling into hands before they both realised how big a mistake it was, and Blaine pulled away, tears hot in his eyes.

He didn't let himself fall for someone else for a long time.

* * *

 

Kurt's "gay problem", as the jocks at school called it, was never officially a problem. He had never pushed himself onto a guy, had never even looked at a guy sideways. He just knew what he wanted in his soul, knew that he would never be happy standing beside a girl at the altar. He'd much rather Aladdin than Jasmine, Eric than Ariel. It was as simple as that, and if he had been anyone else, no one would ever have realised he was gay or called him out on it.

But his voice was too high, and he was too proud in his own tastes to limit his fashion because others told him to do so. And so he wore his flamboyant clothes and when he spoke it was like the world was coming down around him.

He never had to touch a boy for them to know he was gay. He'd never touched a boy in his life.

* * *

 

It was someone else that eventually outed Blaine, though he couldn't blame him. It was purely chance an accident that the two of them had grown closer of the period of a few months. It had progressed relatively quickly, to the point that they spent each afternoon at each others houses, working on homework or simply talking over the sound of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. 

It was Logan who had kissed him first, and maybe that's why Blaine hadn't expected it. He wasn't in love with him, he was just his best friend and then suddenly they were kissing and it didn't feel right, not to Blaine. He was just his best friend. But still Logan kept kissing him, each time they were at his house, and Blaine didn't know how to say no, not to his best friend.

They went to the Sadie Hawkins dance together, and it wasn't perfect. Logan picked him up and their corsages weren't matching and they held hands awkwardly and when they arrived, it was like they were the scum of the earth.

Blaine went home with bruises across his face and torso and a broken wrist. Logan went home in tears and embarrassment and Blaine saying "I don't love you back" ringing in his ears.

* * *

 

Kurt's first proper crush ended up being his stepbrother. Well, he was a crush first, and then a stepbrother but it didn't make things any more difficult to deal with. He never touched him, not once, only watched him from across the room with dreamy eyes, and once he'd seen him shovelling food into his mouth like a dump truck and heard him shitting, all appeal was gone.

* * *

 

The aftermath of the Sadie Hawkins dance resulted in Blaine being pulled from school by his father and sent to a boarding school three towns over, where the bullying policy was zero tolerance, and he never had to explain to anyone why his son was tortured at public school.

Despite the clear understanding of why he was being sent, Blaine didn't mind Dalton. It had security, and people who genuinely liked him and cared about his welfare, and when he told his new best friend Trent, _I'm gay,_ Trent only laughed and responded with, _You think I woke up one morning with this sass?_

* * *

 

Kurt ended up at Dalton through sheer force of his own will. He'd been having a bad day - scrap that, bad month - at school, and when he arrived home, bruises ringing his wrists from the force of the attack and hot tears collecting in his eyes, he googled the internet for every form of the term "safe school" he could think of. Dalton was the one hit that drew his attention.

It was close enough to home that he could still be near his dad, whose health was nowhere near its prime, and far enough away that the boys who tormented him couldn't touch him. The tuition was expensive, but he applied for a scholarship and his dad funded the rest and somehow they managed to get him there.

* * *

 

The two met on Kurt's first day. Blaine had been attending for over a year now, and he had blended in to the Dalton lifestyle easily, becoming one of them, but also standing out from the crowd. He was a born leader, and his grades were impeccable, and all the teachers and headmasters adored him.

He was chosen to show Kurt around the school for that reason, though they told him it was because he was welcoming and charming and free during that period. But Blaine was always the first one that came to their minds when they thought of model students.

Kurt was quiet, withdrawn, and Blaine didn't hold it against him. He was broken inside, Blaine could tell, and he needed someone to tell him that he wasn't alone. And so Blaine was that person, holding out his hand and saying, "After I've shown you around do you want to go for coffee? They don't make you attend classes the first day and I've been given a free pass out of mine."

He could see the movement building up in Kurt's neck, that shake of his head, _no,_ but he shook his own head first. "Come on, it'll be fun."

His eyes are dark and cautious when he says okay.

* * *

 

It takes Kurt two weeks to realise that it is really safe at Dalton. Safe, but stifling. There are rules and expectations of everyone, including good grades and good manners, and sometimes he feels like showing up to dinner with bagpipes just to see what would happen.

But they don't care about his voice, or his so obviously gay personality, and they don't ask about the bruises slowly fading from his wrists. 

Blaine is the nicest of all. He brings him cups of tea that he's snuck out of the kitchen and sits with him in the afternoons after study hall and asks him about his day. He neglects all his other friends, sometimes, for Kurt, and although Kurt is friends with so many people at Dalton, Blaine is his best friend, as easy as it is to breathe.

* * *

 

Kurt's second year at Dalton, he's feels like maybe he's becoming a clone, but it's not the end of the world because he's safe here. He will give anything to be safe. 

The people he may have once considered friends - those few of them who didn't despise him - have come to ignore him all together, and he ignores them in turn, and the kids at Dalton become all he knows.

Blaine is a constant presence, by his side between classes and during those they share and at dining hall and study hall. They take regularly coffee runs, especially on weekends, and if Kurt goes home to visit his parents, he sometimes takes Blaine with him. 

His dad asks, when no one is listening, "Do you like this boy?" And the answer is yes, of course the answer is yes, like no one else he's ever met before, but they are friends, and nothing will come between that.

* * *

 

They both end up applying for NYU, a big city with a big college. Blaine is studying law, like his dad always wanted him to, and Kurt studies American Literature and Psychology, and neither of them really like what they're doing, but its all they know and they keep doing it.

Their third year of college, they move into an apartment together, with three bedrooms, and let the third out to a girl from Kentucky with a wide smile. She flirts with both of them, and teases them incessantly about what she calls their "little romance" but there is nothing there, they assure her. They are best friends, and that is all.

* * *

 

Kurt has a string of affairs with sleazy guys from bars and experimenting college boys who all find themselves the dumper or the dumpee within a few short weeks of dating Kurt Hummel.

Blaine meets a cute boy with wide brown eyes who laughs at his jokes the same way Kurt does and kisses him gently outside their apartment. They date for two years and Connor's moved in with them before they break up over something small and insignificant and he moves out again. Blaine cries for weeks and Kurt stands by his bedside and brings him tea and offers to talk and when Blaine says "I thought I loved him, Kurt," he says, "I know."

* * *

 

They become adults living a young adult world, two thirty year old men sharing an apartment like they're still twenty-five, and Kurt's still having one night stands that he takes to seedy hotels instead of bearing the shame of bringing them home.  

And Blaine continues to get his heart broken by boys who understand too much, and know what he really wants. And what he really wants is Kurt.

* * *

 

They're nearing forty-five when they have the conversation they should have had when they were seventeen. Kurt's fighting the grey with hair dye and Blaine's left the hair gel behind and lets his hair fall curly and rough around his ears. 

"I don't love any of them," Kurt says at Blaine's question. "And they're becoming considerably less regular." He bites his lip. "I think I've stopped being the prey and become the predator. I hate it."

"They take me in and they think I'm great and when they realise how much I'm not they leave for someone better, someone who can actually really truly love them back," Blaine says the curve of his own palm. "Because I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I love someone else."

"Oh."

And Kurt knows, of course he knows. They've both known, since they were in senior year. But doing something about it is very different, and it seems too late now. 

Blaine stands up, running his hand through his hair. "We're a pair of messes, aren't we?" he asks.

"Of course." Kurt smiles at him sympathetically, but as he turns towards his room, he whispers, loud enough that he must have heard, "I love you too, Blaine."

* * *

 

It doesn't matter how much they love each other - with their whole being, with the spread of butter on toast in the morning, the brewing of tea on a late sad evening - they've left things too late, and destiny was not meant for them, and they were not meant to be happy. This they learn as they grow old, together, yet so very far apart.


End file.
